


You Win or You Die

by rillrill



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV), Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Alternate Universe, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Careers (Hunger Games), F/M, Forced Prostitution, Gen, Hunger Games, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Jon Snow knows nothing, M/M, Parent Death, Parent-Child Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-26
Updated: 2014-07-26
Packaged: 2018-02-10 12:39:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2025417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rillrill/pseuds/rillrill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for a very old ASOIAF Kink Meme prompt: "Hunger Games AU. Four victors who didn't think they were going to win, and one victor who only knew they had to make it out alive no matter what."</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Win or You Die

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I couldn't _not_ write this.
> 
> Um, so yeah. Fair warning, I really like Careers. I really like exploring the more unsavory aspects of the Panem-'verse - the ones that are just alluded to in the books, like the Career system and how some of the victors are subjected to forced prostitution and sexual abuse. Heed those warnings, and tread lightly. Also, yeah, if you clicked on this looking for shiny happy consensual Theon/Ramsay or Sansa/Petyr, you should probably disabuse yourself of those notions _right now_. (I am a full-on creepyshipper but jumped at the chance to write Dark Baelish, since it's so out of my normal repertoire. Ramsay, though... Ramsay fit right into this world, that's all I'm saying.)
> 
> Jon Snow still knows nothing, except the lord's kiss, and what a windmill looks like, probably.

_“There is only one god, and his name is Death. And what do we say to the God of Death?”  
   “Not today.”_

 

  **1. _76th Hunger Games_**

The day Brienne went residential in the Center, she figured she was never coming home.

District Two doesn’t do sympathetic. It’s not in the nature, not built into the bedrock that makes the district what it is: proud, strong, unforgiving. District Two tributes are trained in the art of narratives, of course, not just combat and survival, and they know how to play the roles they’re dealt, but more often than not, it’s the role of the villain. Even the best Twos are often hoist by their own petard. The year before Brienne’s games, the boy from Two monologued too long before killing a twelve-year-old from Eleven and ended up sliced up by a kid from Six. Brienne watched his death onscreen in the Center, while the trainers explained exactly where he went wrong. “He lost as soon as he started talking before killing Eleven Girl. If you’re gonna give a monologue, do it after the kill,” grumbled Hyle, and Brienne remained impassive, didn’t let her face belay her emotion, as ever. 

From day one, she knew it would be her up on that stage come Reaping Day. The other girls her year are all too small, too weak, never quite as good as she is. They may be a hell of a lot prettier, but pretty isn’t all that matters in the Arena, and for every Ellaria Sand, who came from nowhere without training and managed to win over sponsors based solely on her beauty, there are a dozen Lyanna Starks, pretty girls who had nothing to back it up and ended up back in their districts in rotting pieces. Brienne’s not pretty, but she’s strong as hell and can fight with just about every weapon there is.

So come Reaping Day, the Center prep team dresses her up in pants and a jacket that look a bit like silver plated armor. She volunteers in the square, striding up to the stage like she was born to it. Their Capitol escort seems flustered by her height, how she towers over him even in flats, and she gives him nothing: no banter, no blushing glee. “Brienne,” she says, when he asks what her name is, and nothing more.

Sandor volunteers next, and she catches a glimpse at the screens plastered with their image and has to swallow a hoarse laugh: their diminutive chaperone, all of 5’7” in lifted shoes, between them. Neither of them speaks. Sandor is a boy of as few words as she is. 

He’s larger than even she is, and there’s a burn scar on his face and a darkness in his eyes. She’s too tall, too ugly, too ungainly, deadly but still marked for dead. She always knew she wasn’t coming home – not like there’s a home to return to, hell, the Center is all she’s known since she was 12. 

*

The Arena, though, is exactly what she expected.

She doesn’t enjoy killing. She never has. It was always just a fact of life, a part of the Games she’d have to accept. Peacekeepers kill, though, and so do the slaughterhouse workers in Ten and the weapons developers in Five. She’s not special for learning to kill as part of a trade. So she does it fast, doesn’t toy with her victims or get a buzz off their spilled blood.

Sandor’s like her, but that’s part of the problem. They practically cancel each other out, and in a better world, they wouldn’t have had to go in together at all, but they’re in the same year and the previous year was just too stacked with viable candidates, so instead, they’re both here, contributing nothing to the all-important scenes of Career-pack banter.

They win few fans and fewer sponsors, but Jeor and Jeyne, the pair from One, are at each other’s throats almost immediately. He burns too hot and she moves just a split second too slowly, and they take each other out in the middle of the night, when the Gamemakers set their camp aflame. He buries a knife in her stomach, but she manages to drag him down into the flames as she falls.

Sandor is catatonic, frozen in place, staring at the flames, and Brienne realizes that this is an ideal moment to take him out – but the look on his face, of almost childlike horror, compels her to do otherwise. She grabs him by the back of the collar. “Come on!” she screams, yanking him backward. “Go, go, run!”

He doesn’t thank her. He returns the favor, two days later, when a kid from Seven attacks them with an axe. Sandor takes off his head in one clean blow, and they both watch it roll down the hillside to a bumpy stop.

*

“So, Miss Tarth!” Varys’ voice is a bit too loud as she collapses into the chair opposite him. She’s on a load of sedatives and there are still cuts healing across her shoulders and back. Varys’ grin is too bright, his stylishly bald head shining under the bright stage lights (she’ll never understand these Capitol trends) and she steels herself. She can make it through one more interview. “You really gave us a show in there, didn’t you?”

Brienne grits her teeth. “I guess so,” she says. She doesn’t want to talk about it. Doesn’t want to talk about the final two days, the way their Career pack splintered and broke, the way Sandor – she could never call him Two Boy, for some reason, could never disassociate from his humanity the way they’re taught in the Center – came at her and how their final fight lasted all night until she finally managed to drive her sword into the space between two of his ribs. She doesn’t want to talk about the last cannon, the whir of the hovercraft. But she has to say something, so she shrugs. “I just did my best,” she says. “I know the Capitol wasn’t all that keen on me at first, but I just stayed focused.”

“Tell me, Brienne,” says Varys, all simpering sweet. “What was your motivation in the Arena?”

She doesn’t pause before speaking this time. “I swore an oath before I left, that I would bring honor to District Two, whether I returned home dead or alive,” she says. “And I don’t know about you, Varys, but I keep my oaths.”

He chuckles. “You’re a bigger man than I am, Tarth,” he says, mugging for the camera.

“Well, from what I’ve heard, that’s not a high bar to clear, even as a woman,” she deadpans, and the audience erupts into laughter.

They banter back and forth, the emcee making light jokes and Brienne deflecting them in her flat, measured style, and as much as she hates the process, she’s surprised to find that the audience is loving her. It’s a striking departure from her first interview, where she was flat and unimpressive next to the tributes from One and the pretty, funny girl from Eight. Now it almost feels like sparring: he parries and she blocks, as comfortable with her words as she would be with a sword. When they break to view the greatest-hits montage from the Arena, she turns away from the screen. She doesn’t want to see it.

She’s going home. She doesn’t know what’s waiting for her. She doesn’t know how she’ll make it through the nights, when visions of Seven’s head rolling down the hillside still flash before her eyes even when she’s awake. She only knows she’s going home.

She hopes it was worth it.

 

  **2. _89th Hunger Games ___**

The day her brother wins the 88th Games, Margaery knows her goose is cooked.

The country has only had a single set of brother-sister victors before, and they were from One, almost twenty years ago. Jaime and Cersei won back-to-back Games – his in the Quarter Quell, hers the year following – and highlights from their Games are still played in One every year. They were beautiful terrors, she with her knives and he with his sword, and even the fact that he lost his hand in a bloody fight with a boy from Ten didn’t diminish his appeal.

Loras and Margaery often play at pretending to be Jaime and Cersei as children, chasing each other around the house with broomsticks as toy swords, and when the Academy recruits them, Loras is seven and Margaery is six. They’re pretty even as children, all curls and big doe eyes, and can almost pass for twins. Their parents cautiously allow them to attend the after-school sessions at the Academy for several years, and by the time they take their first kill tests, just a hamster and a squirrel, respectively, the family has fallen on hard times – Father loses several fingers on one hand in a factory accident, and Mother has started to lean hard on the drink. One is not a happy place to live, even despite its reputation among the outer districts for the glamour of its primary industries.

Grandmother signs the forms, collects the stipend, and Loras moves into the Academy the day he turns fourteen. Margaery follows, eleven months later.

On the day that Loras wins his Games, Margaery’s stomach drops through the floor. Because now, it’s unavoidable. Had he lost, they probably wouldn’t send her – other girls are stronger and deadlier, and at least as pretty. But now, she’s _special_. She’s the second coming of Cersei Lannister, perfectly timed now that Cersei is not as young and beautiful as she used to be.

The first thing they learned in strategy class: never make yourself out to be extraordinary. Be good, but not special. The special ones become prey.

Two administrators usher her into a little room, with steel walls on all four sides. Inside, there’s a man sitting at a table, a stack of papers and a black chrome pen before him. “Ah, Marg-ary,” he says in a Capitol accent, mispronouncing her name with a hard ‘g’. “It’s lovely to finally meet this girl we’ve heard so much about.”

“Thank you, sir,” she says demurely. She doesn’t correct his pronunciation.

The ceremony is quick and without flourish. It ends with a handshake and a signature. She signs her life away and doesn’t look back.

*

She doesn’t find out for another six months who they’re sending alongside her, and when she does, she groans. It’s Joffrey.

On the one hand, of _course_ it’s Joffrey. Because if they want a good show, they can’t get much better than this: Cersei Lannister’s son, against the girl who may as well be the next Cersei herself. Furthermore, he’s a legacy, and while such tributes are rare – neither of Joffrey’s siblings ended up in the program themselves – they’re always a main attraction. He’s got victor blood, but so does she, and that has to count for something.

But what really worries her is the fact that while Joffrey isn’t a very good fighter, he more than makes up for it in bloodthirst. And not the kind that can be turned on and off, channeled through appropriate means, but the kind that makes the trainers worry and everyone else give him a wider berth in the gym. He walked out of his first kill test sneering, and she’s seen him pin the much smaller girls to the mats during open sparring sessions, slamming them to the floor and shoving his hands into their loose uniform pants, letting them walk away with bruises around their necks. He’s a vile little creature, a monster in the truest sense of the word, and Margaery’s afraid he may win this thing yet.

*

She’s second in line for the pre-show interviews, and as Joffrey strides onstage, she clenches her teeth and her fists, willing herself to calm down and lose her nerves. The dress her stylists put her in is completely sheer on both sides, with nothing underneath, and while she trained herself long ago not to feel self-conscious – nine years in the Academy, being stripped by doctors and trainers and stylists, were enough to dull those instincts – she’s still all too aware of the vast injustice of it all. The boys are all fully dressed, if not necessarily all too dignified, but she’s draped in glimmering crystals with her nipples fully exposed through the sheer netting, and Girl Two is only slightly more covered, wrapped in a short, tight metallic dress that looks a bit like aluminum foil. 

Margaery sighs and turns away, and catches a glimpse of herself in a nearby mirror as she does so. Her lips have been painted iridescent light pink, and long fake eyelashes exaggerate the size of her already-large eyes. She looks like the sex-doll cartoon version of herself, drawn like an object of pleasure, rather than power. 

Out on stage, she can hear the audience jeering, which is a rarity. Normally, they’re in the tank for One’s tributes from the very beginning, and Joffrey must have really fucked up to make them turn on him so quickly. She can hear Varys wrapping up the interview, and she straightens her posture and pulls back her shoulders as an assistant preps her to take the stage. When she does, it’s with her head held high, chin jutting out imperiously to deafening applause.

“Now, Margaery,” says Varys as the crowd settles. “That’s quite an outfit you’ve got on.”

She glances down at her dress, folding her hands in her lap in an attempt to preserve some last bits of her modesty. “Oh, this old thing?” she says playfully. “My stylist just pulled it out of a trunk somewhere. 

The crowd laughs, and so does Varys. “Oh, I know you One girls just love your jewels,” he says. “Do you think you’ll be wearing that into the Arena?”

“Perhaps,” she says with a coy smile. “Though I don’t think it’d be very useful. I’d run out of places to store my weapons, don’t you think?”

“I think I speak for every man and woman in here when I say that with those things, you’re not going to need any weapons,” says Varys.

She grins, lips sliding over freshly laser-whitened teeth to bare her sharp little fangs. “That’s the spirit,” she says. Cue more applause.

*

The night before the Games, Margaery doesn’t sleep well.

At dinner, everyone was silent. She’s not sure how it’s fair – or even legal – for Joffrey to get his uncle Jaime as a mentor, while she ends up with her own brother. Loras doesn’t have much to say, and his inexperience is obvious. It’s painfully clear that the Academy cleared this because they sensed it would make a fantastic narrative, but it’s not a narrative that she senses herself coming out of on top.

She tosses and turns in bed, unable to stay asleep for more than a few minutes at a single stretch. After some interminable amount of time – perhaps several minutes, maybe an hour – she finds herself drifting off, when she suddenly jerks awake, aware of another presence in her room.

Someone’s sitting on her bed, and as her eyes adjust to the dark, she catches a glimpse of blonde hair reflecting the moonlight streaming in through the window. She gasps in shock, scrambling away from his form, as Joffrey breaks his silence, murmuring, “I wondered how long it would take you to wake up.”

“What are you _doing_ here?” Margaery demands.

“You know, I couldn’t sleep, and I started thinking up all the different ways I could kill you,” he says calmly, running his hand across the bedclothes. “Normally, that puts me right to sleep, but this time, I got – _excited_. I thought I’d come in for a taste.”

“Get the fuck away from me,” she says. Her voice is cold steel, but the edge is as sharp as the knives she kills with. “Get the fuck away, or I will scream.”

“You really think your avox will be able to help you?” he asks, his tone almost mocking her outright. “It’s too late, you stupid bitch. No one to hear you. Just try it. You’ll regret it the second you do.”

Margaery takes a deep breath, steadying herself, all while snaking one hand beneath her pillow. He’s staring at her through narrowed eyes, his hand moving further up the duvet, closer to her upper thigh. “Yeah, I think I’ll take you here,” he says, and without warning, lunges at her. He manages to get one hand around her throat before she swings the dagger out from beneath her pillow and slashes him across one cheek.

He shrieks and pulls away in pain and shock, and Margaery tightens her grip on the handle. “I told you to get the fuck out,” she says. “Now you can either do as I say, or explain to your prep team tomorrow why you’ve not only got a cut on your face, but no eyes and no cock as well.”

Joffrey’s face looks monstrous, and for a moment she’s afraid he’ll kill her there, but the idiot child has apparently come unarmed, and instead, he runs for the door. She locks it as he goes and slides down to the floor, her back solid against the door and the bloody knife still clenched tight in her white-knuckled fist.

She doesn’t sleep at all that night.

*

She wastes no time with formalities or playing the game, making up a good story.

She kills him first, catches him off-guard in the bloodbath and buries a knife in his throat from ten feet away.

The rest of the Games barely register. She only knows that she wins.

 

 

  **3. _90th Hunger Games_**

Theon Greyjoy volunteers not out of any high-minded notions of glory and honor, but because District Four is low on boys this year and if he doesn’t go, it’s likely to be some poor little 12-year-old who’ll just get carved up in the bloodbath. Four’s training program isn’t half as rigorous as the systems they’ve got in One and Two, but they try not to let little kids get killed on their watch, and so when a kid who, true to the predictions, looks like he only comes up to Theon’s nipples gets his name called, Theon sighs, runs a hand through his hair, and volunteers, joining a horse-faced girl whose name he doesn’t remember onstage. She’s not in the program with him, so it’s not likely that she’ll know how to fight, but she looks to be maybe sixteen or seventeen, so nobody volunteered for her, either.

That’s just how Four works. People here take care of their own, but only up to a certain extent, and after that, you’re on your own. Asha went through the program before him, and she never actually volunteered – got off lucky, the three years she would’ve been expected to go, everyone Reaped was either older or stronger than she was – but it made her strong and useful as hell, and she took to carrying around a dagger in her bra and pulling it on the off-duty fishmongers who got handsy down at the pub.

She was always their father’s favorite, fierce and loud in a manner not befitting the Mayor’s daughter, but Theon supposes that anyone who expects any kid of Balon Greyjoy’s to sit quietly and smile demurely has got another thought coming anyway. All the program did was teach her to hit people harder and more accurately. She never had to face her own mortality in the way that Theon is facing it, right this very moment, as he sits in silence on the silently whirring train and thumbs the kraken pin his sister placed on his jacket during their last minute together in the Justice Building.

*

“Oh, he’s a handsome one!” A woman with purplish-blue hair grins toothily as he steps into the Remake Center, shaking back his hair out of his eyes. “Come closer, let me get a look at you.”

“Like what you see?” Theon grins back.

“How old are you, kid?” asks another woman, this one reed-thin with an elaborate gold wig. 

“Sixteen,” he says. 

The girls exchange giddy looks. “Oh, he’ll be perfect,” says Golden Wig, and reaches out to tug at the collar of his jacket, indicating for its removal. 

He lets them strip him down completely, and cocks an eyebrow. “Like what you see?” They’d better, he thinks. He’s got a great body – a swimmer’s build, but with strong biceps and shoulders, equally comfortable in the water and on land. He’s a Greyjoy, for fuck’s sake. The men of his family have always been devilishly handsome, and he’ll be damned if he’s the first exception in a century.

“He has nice muscle tone, but he needs a waxing,” says Purple Hair to Golden Wig, rather critically, to Theon’s indignance. “I think Ramsay will want to give him the full treatment.”

He’s always had a high tolerance for pain. Having his chest and pubic hair waxed, however, is on another level, unlike any pain he’s ever known.

His stylist is a young man with the pale, dirty grey eyes of a shark, Capitol-bred with a strange air of indifference to any earthly matters. “Stand,” he commands Theon, gaze raking over his body without emotion. “Now turn. All the way around. Good.”

Theon does as he commands, a strange discomfort growing in him as he does. Back home, he’s the Mayor’s son, a Career, talented, popular. Here, he’s nothing but meat.

“You’ll do,” says Ramsay. “I’m thinking… Poseidon. God of the sea. It’s been done before, of course, but I suppose I’ll just have to do it better.”

He’s awfully close to Theon, those ice-chip eyes traveling up and down his body, and Theon has never been less comfortable in the presence of another person. “Yes,” Ramsay murmurs, almost inaudibly. “This one will be my masterstroke.”

*

“Theon Greyjoy. District Four, male.”

When he states his name and district at the top of his session, he notices that the Head Gamemaker turns his head and pays attention. Roose Bolton’s gaze sears through Theon throughout the ten allotted minutes. This was always his specialty – showmanship on top of fighting strength – and he makes the most of his time there, putting on a great show, even by Career standards. With a cocky smirk, he picks up a spear from the rack, tests its heft in his left hand, and sends it through the heart of a dummy across the room. He repeats the move two more times, skewering two more dummies, and then slings a sleek silver bow and a quiver of arrows over his shoulder. He takes off across the foor, leaping into the air and catching onto the net suspended from floor to ceiling, and scales it easily.

The next move is a well-practiced one, and he relishes in performing it: hooking one arm through the netting for balance, he reaches for an arrow and aims at the furthest dummy. When he lets the arrow fly, it’s a perfect head shot. Another sticks in the dummy’s chest, and a third in its crotch. He climbs a few feet higher, and sends his last two arrows into the heart of the target across the room.

When the clock tells him that there are five minutes remaining, he drops to the ground and picks up a sword from the rack. Only one dummy remains untouched, and he circles it stealthily, as if preparing for a fight. “Come and get me, motherfucker,” he says, low and intense but still projecting for the Gamemakers at the back of the balcony. “I’ve been waiting for this moment for days.” With one swift motion, he spins and takes off a plastic hand, then moves away. He’s stalking his prey, playing with it, putting on the type of show the Capitol loves. “You want me to kill you quick?” he asks, taunting, cocky and self-assured as always. “Or do you want me to make this last a while? You gonna cry for your mommy, now? Go ahead, cry. Nobody’s gonna save you. Nobody can hear you.”

He scores a nine. It’s the perfect score: high enough to secure him a place in the Career pack, but not so high that it’ll attract undue attention and make him a target.

*

As he leaps from his podium and races toward the Cornucopia, he spots a bow and a quiver of arrows near the back. The bow looks big, as if it’s made specifically for someone his height.

By the time he reaches it, he’s got two kills and a third assist to his name already.

*

The Games are short this year. He’s only in the Arena for six days, and the last two days, somehow, are the easiest.

He comes out of the Arena, shaken up but not seriously injured, after dispatching a fourteen-year-old from an outlying district. He meant to do it humanely, but dehydration had set in by that point and his arrows were long gone, and so it took a series of hacking thrusts with the sword he took from Two Boy’s body to finally kill the poor kid. But he’s out, and he’s safe now, and he gets to go home and prove to everyone, prove to Asha and his father and his goddamn uncles that everything they’ve ever said about him – that he’s soft, he’s lazy, he’s too pretty for his own good – they were wrong, they’ve always been wrong, he did everything right and he won and he’s a _victor_ , now, by all seven gods and seven hells. There's nothing they can do to take this away from him.

There’s a party on the night of his Closing Ceremonies. His stylist is curiously absent, but his escort dresses him in a beautiful silver suit made of shark skin and that iron kraken pin, and the rest of the prep team styles his hair carefully and even outlines his eyes with a bit of black liner. He looks like one of those Capitol fucks, but he doesn’t mind it so much now that he’s proved that he belongs. He will always be of District Four, but he can be a man of the Capitol, too.

Inside the party, someone presses a drink into his hand. It’s violently glowing and green, and he takes a sip and nearly gags on the taste. This isn’t the way they drink in the Districts. It’s sugar-sweet and unpleasant. He starts to set it down, but as he does, a voice sounds behind him: “You’ll want to finish that.”

He turns. The source of the voice has golden hair and a chiseled jawline, and Theon’s tired as hell, but one glance at the bronze prosthetic where the man’s right hand would be confirms his initial suspicion. “Holy shit,” he mutters. “Jaime Lannister. You’re – I mean, you’re a legend. Were you mentoring this year? Because if I killed your tribute, I’m really sorry.”

Jaime shakes his head. “Not this year, I’m afraid,” he says. “We don’t lack for mentors in One, and I did my time last year, with my nephew. Given how that turned out, I assumed it would be unwise to try again quite so soon.”

“Then what brings you to the Capitol?” Theon’s trying not to sound, fuck, _starstruck_ or anything, but Jaime Lannister is as close to an icon as the Games have ever wrought.

The golden man takes a sip of his own green drink, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat as he swallows before speaking again. “Official business,” he says simply.

“Aha.” Theon nods, trying desperately to think of something else to say to this man. Not that he makes a habit out of hero-worshipping District One victors, but Lannister is a special case, he thinks.

Just then, another hand claps Theon on the shoulder, and he turns. It’s his stylist, Ramsay, with his hair slicked back and a sneer on his face. He’s wearing a suit like Theon’s, but his is metallic blue. “Well done, boy,” he says. _Boy?_ Theon thinks. _He can’t be much older than me, if he’s even older at all._

“Thank you,” says Theon stiffly, and Ramsay laughs. From the inside of his blue coat, he produces a white rose, handing it to Theon without flourish. Theon takes it, hesitantly, unsure of the implications. “Thank you?” he says again, but it’s a question this time, and Ramsay gives him a questioning look.

“Has Jaime explained to you how the system works?” Ramsay asks. Theon shakes his head, and Ramsay lets out another barking laugh. “Oh, this will be fun,” he says. “Your first time, I imagine? Well, your first time here in the Capitol, at least.”

He moves closer to Theon and hisses in his ear, “You belong to me now, Greyjoy. You’ve been bought and paid for.”

This can’t be right. He’s a victor, not some whore. Theon starts to turn back to Jaime, but he’s gone, and all that’s left is Ramsay’s hands on his body – probing, searching, far too harshly, it’s not pleasant at all it’s bad dirty wrong no no no -

And all Ramsay does is laugh again, those dead eyes reflecting the party lights as Theon, for the first time, starts to understand the rumors he’s heard about the best-looking victors.

 

 

  **4. _99th Hunger Games_**

Ygritte doesn’t expect to be reaped. Then again, no one here does.

Seven’s a big district. Not just big, but populous as well. It’s impossible to get everyone in the same place at once for the Reaping, as they can do in the smaller districts. Instead, the village squares all fill up on the same day and show a live stream from the District Seat, which happens to be where Ygritte lives. She’s seventeen and has made it this far without ever hearing her name called, so she’s not so worried. But her name’s also in the lottery thirty-six times, which complicates things. 

She never wanted to take tesserae, but she never had a choice, either. Providing for her brothers after her mom died and Dad got dragged off by Peacekeepers for “disturbing the peace” took a toll on her. She dropped out of school at fifteen, took a job at the local bar and learned how to fend for herself.

As a child, Mom used to take her out to the woods and show her how to use a bow. “You might as well be prepared, child,” she’d say every time. “Gods know we ain’t lucky enough to have volunteers here.”

So when the woman onstage calls her name, she flinches, but walks to the front of the crowd, which parts to let her pass.

*

She’s never met Mance Rayder before, but seeing as he’s supposed to be her mentor now, she figures they ought to get to know each other sooner or later.

She collapses onto the chair beside him. She can smell the alcohol on his breath. “You smell like a brewery,” she mutters, and picks up a glass herself.

“How old are you, kid?” he asks.

She fixes him with a stare. “Old enough to have a drink while you tell me how I’m about to die,” she says coldly.

A smile cracks across his cragged face, and he begins to laugh. “Fair enough,” he says, pouring one out. “You want the long or the short of it?”

“Actually, I’d like to know how you won,” she says.

“Brute force. I was stronger than everyone else. You think you stand a chance in there, kid?”

Ygritte shrugs. “I’m not strong. But I’m a good shot. I learned how to use a bow young, and I never fell out of practice.”

He frowns. “First piece of advice, then? Keep that to yourself.”

“But –“ 

“But nothing. The minute you step off this train, you’ve never held a weapon of any kind in your life. You’re just a cute little redhead from Seven who knows a thing or two about survival skills. That’s all.” Mance takes another gulp of whisky, surveying Ygritte over the top of his glass. “No offense, kid. But you’re not going to win any points based on intimidation. Keep your skills to yourself until you get in there. In that case, and that case alone, you may stand a chance.”

*

During the Tribute Parade, the stylists prop her and Karl up in their chariot. In an unusual turn of events, they’re not dressed as trees this year. Instead, their costumes are a more stylish take on the way the lumbermen dress in the harsh northern winters up in Seven. She’s in mostly black and grey, with a thick animal pelt slung around her, and an axe in one hand. Beside her, Karl’s in all black as well, thick black fur on his shoulders, the dark colors emphasizing the sharp angles of his face.

“You work at the tavern down near Gin Alley,” he tells her without preamble as they wait for the chariots to pull out. “I’ve seen you coming and going before. Always wondered what’s a pretty girl like you doing working there.”

“I don’t do much,” she says. “Sweeping and cleaning up the bar.”

“You should come around Flea Bottom more often,” he grins. “Could make a lot more money selling what you’ve got down there.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Yeah? Too bad,” says Karl, leaning against the back of their ride. “You heard about me, yeah? Karl Tanner. I’m a fuckin’ _legend_ down in Gin Alley.”

“Afraid not.” Her voice is pointed but he doesn’t seem to get the point. Blessedly, their wagon starts to roll, and he shuts up.

Out on the city center tarmac, she keeps her head high as the President speaks. Two chariots away, she catches the eye of another boy, the male tribute from Five. He’s got shaggy black curls and looks thoroughly miserable, and as they make eye contact, she thinks about smiling at him, but decides against it.

Oh, but he’s pretty though. It’s too bad they’re both going to be dead in two weeks’ time.

*

In the Training Center the next morning, she does exactly as Mance instructed her, and gives the rack of bows a wide berth. Instead, she heads for the poisonous-plants station, memorizing leaves and berries, taking to heart the trainers’ words about the statistic likelihood that they’ll mostly die due to their own fuck-ups.

Across the gym, the Five boy with black hair is sparring with a big guy from one of the Career districts. They’ve both got blunted wooden swords and are going at each other hard, sweat dripping down both of their faces. The other two Career boys are just standing around watching as they fight, loud cracks of wood on wood echoing through the gym.

Finally, Five Boy misjudges a blow and the Career’s wooden sword hits him square in the face. He turns away, and Ygritte can’t help biting her lip as Five Boy lifts up the bottom hem of his t-shirt to wipe the blood from his nose. 

Later, she sidles up to him at the knot-tying station. “Nice job sparring with the ape from Two,” she says. “Sucks that you couldn’t block that one, but the guy's built like a brick shithouse, so I guess I can't judge you too much.”

He looks at her askance, and wow, his eyes are even prettier up close. “Thanks,” he says dryly. “Jon Snow. District Five.”

“Ygritte,” she says simply. “Seven. Where’d you learn to fight like that?”

He glances down at the floor. “My dad told me I should learn. Said I had a decent shot at becoming a Peacekeeper someday.”

“Well, never say never, I guess,” Ygritte says. “You just did that knot all wrong, you know. It’s never going to hold.”

He furrows his brow. “I know how to tie a knot.”

“Let me show you.” She pulls at the ends of the smooth cord in his hands, and the knot tumbles apart easily. “You’ve got to loop it twice, not just once, see, and pull it a lot tighter like this. That’ll keep you in a tree overnight.”

“You sound like you’re speaking from experience.”

“Told you, I’m from Seven. We know about trees, and rope, and what not.” She pulls on the knot, testing its strength. It holds. “There you go.”

Jon Snow takes the cord back. “Thanks,” he says. He’s still not smiling, but he’s looking at her intently, like he’s spotted something he wants. She’s not unused to this gaze, but coming from someone who looks like this, it’s not unpleasant.

“Any time.”

*

They end up training together for the next two days. She throws a couple spears ineffectually and struggles to lift a heavy weight, and she can hear the Career pack snickering behind her back. She hates it, of course, but when she complains to Mance about it later, he brushes her off. “That means it’s working,” he says in a plaintive tone that suggests she couldn’t be dumber. “Don’t fuck this up now, kid. Just keep moving forward, all according to the plan.”

Karl’s been picked up by the Careers, and he couldn’t be happier. It’s rare, but not unheard of, for the pack to bring in a strong contender from an outlying district, and if nothing else, he’s proved in the gym that his self-ascribed status as a “fuckin’ legend” is not all bluster. He’s not the strongest in the room, but he’s twice as quick as Two Boy and better with a sword than either of the Ones, and so he falls in with their clique easily, laughing too loudly and working to intimidate.

The Careers don’t even bother approaching Jon Snow. They sneer at him behind his back, and Ygritte bristles at it despite _knowing_ fully well how stupid she is for even caring. Instead of reacting, she keeps her head down and memorizes more poisonous plants.

By the evening of the interviews, she’s just tired. The stylists put her in a dress that looks like it’s been fashioned out of big, fake, red-and-orange maple leaves, and she doesn’t bother to explain that maple trees haven’t existed in Seven for years, they take too long to grow back and were replaced by the fast-growing genetically engineered variety long before she was even born. They set a crown of golden acorns in her hair and she feels genuinely ridiculous, but says nothing. 

Two spots up the line, Jon Snow is in iridescent silver. The power district. It makes sense, in an odd way, but he looks thoroughly uncomfortable, and she swallows a laugh. The interviews are dragging on forever, the audience not laughing as hard or clapping as loudly as anyone had hoped, and she’s never felt more like a piece of meat on a hook in the abattoir than she does right now.

Finally, Jon goes onstage, to tepid applause at best. Varys asks him how he’s finding the Capitol, and he makes some half-hearted joke about finally understanding where all the electricity they fund in Five goes to, since the city’s lit up all day and night. It doesn’t land well, and his nerves are evident. Ygritte groans from backstage as she watches him flail.

Finally, the conversation turns to his family. “It’s a big one,” he says, and the nerves start to melt away from his face as he describes them. “Robb’s the oldest, he’s eighteen. We’re only half-brothers, but we basically grew up like twins. There’s Sansa, she’s thirteen – she loves to draw and paint, and she’s great at school. Arya just turned eleven, and she’s _dangerous_ –”

“Dangerous, you say! You think she could win the Games someday?” Varys interjects.

Jon’s face betrays his offense at being asked the question – _honestly_ , Ygritte thinks, _it takes a special level of obliviousness to ask a boy whether his baby sister could win the fuckin’ Hunger Games_ – but he answers anyway. “I mean, give her something pointy and she’ll stick you with it. I wouldn’t underestimate her. And then there’s Bran and Rickon, they’re nine and six.”

“And you said that these are all your half-brothers and sisters, right?”

“Y-yes,” says Jon Snow. “On my father’s side. I never knew my mother. She died when I was born. But they took me in and they raised me as one of their own. I owe them a debt of gratitude that I can never repay.”

Varys leans forward in his seat. “Now, Jon, forgive me for saying this, but you’re a handsome guy,” he says. “Is there a special lady waiting for you to come home to District Five? Someone who inspires you, makes your heart race, makes you want to do your district proud?”

The entire audience seems to lean forward in their own seats as well, and there’s a trembling silence as Jon speaks. “No,” he says hesitantly. “No, there’s never been anyone there. There’s only really been one girl, ever, that I’ve felt that way about.”

With a sigh, Varys shakes his head. “I’m afraid we’re out of time,” he says sadly. “From District Five, everyone – Jon Snow!”

When Ygritte takes the stage ten minutes later, she falls into her chair gracelessly. Varys looks like a jolly old egg, sitting across from her in a suit made from a golden brocade fabric, and he shakes her hand effusively. “ _Eeeeee-grett_ ,” he overpronounces. “Am I saying that right? Ygritte?”

“You’ve just about got it,” she says agreeably. “Rhymes with ‘regret.’”

“Now, I’m sure that’s not the first impression you want to give!” he chides her. “I just love your hair, sweetie. Is it natural?”

“It is,” she says. “In District Seven, we have a saying about people with red hair. ‘Kissed by fire.’ It’s good luck up there.”

“I’m certain it is,” Varys agrees. “Speaking of kisses – what did you think of that Jon Snow? Did every girl in this room just fall in love with him, or what?”

Ygritte rolls her eyes, sitting up straight. “Jon Snow?” she drawls. “He knows nothing.”

The audience erupts into laughter. She glances into the wings. He’s giving her a hurt-puppy look and she smirks back.

*

Mance walks with her into the room where she’s awaiting the trip up into the Arena. 

“Remember,” he says. “Get a bow if you can, get supplies if you can’t, and run. Don’t look back. Don’t waste time. Don’t form alliances. The more time you spend around other tributes, the more opportunities they have to kill you.”

She nods.

With a sigh, Mance claps her on the back. “I’ll see you on the other side, kid.”

Ygritte doesn’t bother to ask whether he means at the Closing Ceremonies or in hell. (Because there’s no way either of them is going to heaven now, right? They’ll both die having murdered children, lots of children, in his case. They’re both going straight to hell without a detour. She’d worry more about this, if she were a person who worried about hell.)

*

On the second day, Jon Snow finds her in the thick of the forest, where she’s cooking a rabbit.

“You should put out that fire,” he says. “Career pack’s not too far away. I heard them arguing over which one gets to kill the redhead.”

“Oh.” Ygritte kicks sand over the flames, leaving the half-cooked rabbit still on the spit. “They after you, too?”

“We were together for about a day, then your Karl Tanner tried to slice me open in the middle of the night,” he says. “He calls himself ‘the fuckin’ legend,’ did you know?”

“I’d heard that one, yeah,” she says, hoisting her bow back over her shoulder. 

Jon Snow pauses and then looks at her imploringly. “Look, you want to – I don’t know – do this together?” he asks. “You don’t have to worry about me. I won’t hurt you. You know I wouldn’t hurt you.”

“You don’t think I can handle myself?” she asks, bristling.

“No, I didn’t mean – I just – I’m not going to go after you with a knife in the middle of the night, that’s all. I play fair.”

Ygritte has to laugh at this. “And that’s why you’re going to lose, Jon Snow.”

She turns on her heel and starts to jog off to the right, beckoning for him to follow. He does.

*

That night, they settle into a cave after the Parade of the Fallen fades from the artificial night sky. The entrance is secluded, almost completely covered by shrubs and ferns, none of which seem like they belong in the same environment – but when Ygritte points this out, Jon only shrugs, saying that he’s never seen most plants, growing up in the city.

“You really know nothing,” she says, rolling her eyes. He laughs.

After much discussion, they both crawl into her one sleeping bag. The quarters are cramped, but Jon lets her rest her head on his folded arm, and as they drift off together, she feels him breathing softly against her hair. In this moment, she allows herself to feel, really _feel_ , the one emotion she’s been repressing since they first locked eyes during the parade.

The following night they return to their cave after a full day of hunting and looking for water together. She took out a brawny kid from Ten with her bow that afternoon, and they’re rewarded with a sponsor gift of fresh bread and a box of protein bars. As Ygritte leans back against the cave wall, she traces a lazy line on Jon’s thigh with one finger. He gives her a smile that could almost be described as bashful.

“What do you want?” he asks.

“You,” she says.

*

There’s a serious uptick in sponsor gifts over the next two days.

“I’m telling you, the women out there are going nuts over you,” she says. “It’s that thing you do with your _mouth_ –”

“You don’t think they – _saw_ – that, do you?” he says, blushing furiously.

“Of course they did. You think that just because we’re in a cave, there’s no cameras? Oh – oh gods, you really did think that! You know _nothing_ , Jon Snow.”

*

It all falls to pieces when he pops a berry into his mouth without consulting her first.

Minutes later, he’s cold on the ground in the forest, eyes bloody and mouth foaming at the corners, muscles still twitching with the last few grips of seizure. Death by nightlock’s never a pretty way to go. 

Ygritte swallows her tears. The lump in her throat only gets bigger and dryer as she hears the cannon fire. He was so _stupid_ – such an easy mistake, they could have so easily avoided this – and yet, somehow, there’s a weight off her shoulders now. She won’t have to kill him. She won’t have to live with this.

And as it turns out, the only thing better for her popularity than being half of a pair of star-crossed lovers in the Arena is having her other half die, tragically, clutching a fistful of berries and choking out her name with his last breath. The sponsor gifts flood in. The Gamemakers even seem to be going easy on her, taking out the two remaining members of the Career pack with a flood across the Arena. The Fuckin' Legend and his sword don’t stand a chance.

She’s crowned three days later, spindly thin and shaking but still going home.

Mance pats her on the shoulder as they board the train back to Seven. She wonders if he’s going to say something trite.

“I’ve got whisky,” he says instead.

“Good.”

 

 

  **5. _100th Hunger Games_**

Sansa has always hated the Games.

She tries not to watch them. She has no interest in the bloodshed or gore, she never has. And when they took Jon, she vowed never to watch again. Her brother is _never_ coming home. It’s not like he joined the Peacekeepers and shipped off to Two and then got placed in some other district, either. It’s not like that at all. He’s dead and the entire country watched him die, a death with no dignity on the muddy ground, choking on some berries. Gods. She can’t think of anything worse.

The family mourns all fall and winter and into spring. When her fourteenth name day rolls around, it occurs to her that her name will be in the Reaping three times. When she brings this up to her mother, though, she brushes it off.

“It’s the Quarter Quell this year, Sansa,” she says. “The Gamemakers will have something different planned, I guarantee it.”

“That’s no guarantee that it won’t be _me_ , though,” Sansa says furiously.

Her mother sighs. “They won’t choose you. This family has been through enough already. Even the Gamemakers have got to have some remorse.”

Sansa tries to put the idea out of her mind, but it settles in her stomach, gnawing at her day and night, whenever she has a bit of spare time for thought. She’s almost managed to forget about it, though, by the day of the Quell announcement.

As the Starks settle into their small spare room to watch the announcement, Sansa threads her fingers through Arya’s hand. The CapitolTV logo flickers onscreen and the anthem blares, before President Targaryen appears onscreen, her pale eyes chilly and wide as she speaks straight to the camera.

“The Hunger Games were established as a reminder to the districts of Panem of what happens to those who attempt to rebel against the country that loves them,” she says. Her voice, utterly devoid of emotion of always, echoes over the sound system and sends a shiver down Sansa’s back. “While the Capitol aims to always provide incentives for its citizens to obey and uphold the laws and promote unity and peace, there comes a time when those incentives must be reinforced through other means. For the fourth Quarter Quell, we aim to remind our citizens of the families that were ripped apart fifty years ago by the rebels who attempted to incite an insurrection against my father, President Aerys Targaryen. This year, all parents who have children of eligible Reaping age will be required to register for the lottery, one time for each eligible child. Our tributes will be drawn from two pools: all registered parents, and the family of the selected parent. In addition, registered parents will now be eligible to collect tesserae, one share for each eligible child…”

The President’s voice seems to fade away as a dull ringing replaces it in Sansa’s ears. She stares at the floor, too afraid to look anywhere else. As if it won’t be real when she does. 

*

On Reaping Day, she puts on her nicest pink dress and brushes out her hair a hundred times. She braids it, and Arya’s too, though she knows her sister’s hair will be full of flyaways by mid-morning in the humid summer air. She doesn’t touch her breakfast, just a cup of oatmeal.

They walk to the town center slowly. Sansa clutches Arya by the hand. She’s newly of Reaping age and her jaw is squared as she walks toward the table, where the assembled Peacekeepers are waiting to take her blood. Robb talked her through it the night before. It’s his first year on the other side – he just turned nineteen a month before – and Sansa wishes, more than anything, that he could take either of their places. Robb could win, if he really tried. He’s gotten in fights at school and won each of them handily, and he’s strong, too. 

Or maybe he couldn’t, she thinks as she lets the Peacekeeper prick her finger and smear it against the paper. She thought Jon had a chance, too, and look where that got him.

As they trudge toward the square, the Starks arrive at a gate, guarded by another set of Peacekeepers. “Parents over here,” says one of them gruffly. “Kids on the other side.”

Mother hugs her tightly. Father clutches onto Arya in the same way. Robb, Bran, and Rickon fall back. “We won’t be far away,” promises Robb, standing between his brothers with their hands clutched tightly in his. “You’ll be okay. It’ll all be over soon, I promise.”

Rickon starts to cry as they separate.

In the square, Sansa takes her place among a group of Fourteens, mostly girls she knows from school. Jeyne Poole chatters nervously amongst them. She has four brothers and sisters, all of Reaping age as well. Sansa chews on her bottom lip, but says nothing. Instead, she scans the crowd and finds Arya, standing on her own near the front with the rest of the Twelves. 

The short film that precedes the ceremony is the same as ever, but Sansa doesn’t hear a single word of it. She digs her nails into the fleshy part of her palms and concentrates on the sensation instead. It grounds her, gives her something concrete to think about, and by the time the pretty woman from the Capitol strides onto the stage, she’s got blood on her hands but it’s okay, somehow.

“Hello, hello, hello!” She’s got a strange accent. It sounds like the Capitol, but maybe like something else as well, an inflection that she can’t trace. This isn’t the same woman who took Jon from them last year – it was a foppish-looking man then, named Olyvar or Olyphant or something like that. Sansa briefly wonders what happened to him, before realizing that she doesn’t care.

A single, large glass bowl is wheeled onstage, and the woman has to stand on tiptoes to peer over it. “We’ll start this year with our adults,” she says, and to her credit, she doesn’t sound gushingly overcome with joy the way the escorts normally do. As she reaches into the bowl, Sansa clinches her eyes shut. She doesn’t want to watch.

As it turns out, shutting her eyes makes no difference.

“Eddard Stark,” rings out the woman’s voice, and in that instant, Sansa’s world falls apart.

She can vaguely sense that she’s falling, or screaming, or some combination of the two. It’s as if her vision has gone completely black, and all of her other senses have fallen away. 

They can’t take her father. They can’t do this. They can’t take him like they took Jon, like they’ve taken countless others. She can’t face the rest of her life on her own, not without him.

His father makes his way to the stage, somehow dignified even in the face of this incredible indignity. “Eddard Stark?” says the escort, and he nods. “Fantastic! How many children do you have, Eddard?”

“It’s Ned,” he says gruffly. “I have si- _five_. But only two in that fishbowl you’ve got there.”

It’s only moments later that the second realization sets in: she and Arya are his only two eligible children of Reaping age.

*

“Why did you do it?”

They’ve just said goodbye to the others. As the train pulls out of Five, Ned looks her in the eye and shakes Sansa by the shoulders. “Answer me, Sansa,” he says, not angrily, but firmly. “Why the hell did you volunteer?”

She frowns. “What choice did I have?” she asks. “It was me or Arya, and Arya’s just a little girl.”

“You’re still a little girl,” he says, his voice devoid of emotion entirely. “Sansa. I don’t –”

“Aren’t I dead either way, though?” she asks, suddenly unable to care whether or not her candor upsets her father. “I mean, honestly. Answer that. There’s no way – we’re not both coming home. I’m not strong. I’m not deadly. What am I supposed to do? Just sit on my hands and watch my sister be taken by wolves? _No_.” Her voice grows stronger the more she speaks. “I may not win. But I’d rather lose the Games to protect the family than do nothing at all.”

Her father shakes his head. She can see tears starting to form at the corners of his eyes, and she doesn’t like it. She’s never seen her father cry, not once, and this is not an ideal time for him to start. “You may be a wolf yet, Sansa,” he says, and she bites back tears of her own.

*

“You’re in luck,” says their escort, whose name, it turns out, is Shae. “As far as the tributes go this year, you look like you’re a strong set. And there’s no Career pack to contend with this year, since the rules prohibited parents from volunteering, so the playing field is more even than usual.”

They’re watching the replay of the tribute parade in the District Five apartment that night. Of particular interest are the tributes from Two – Stannis Baratheon, a sinewy, balding man who looks like he was raised in the stone quarries, and his daughter Shireen, a homely little twelve-year-old with a strange scar on her cheek, whose eyes hide a certain steely quality. Sansa finds the pair from District Eleven particularly intimidating as well: Oberyn Martell, who is handsome and looks to be built for a fight, and his daughter Tyene, a pretty girl with blonde hair and viper eyes. 

Sansa’s father lets out a low exhale when he seems the tributes from Seven cross the screen. “Oh, no,” he says quietly.

“Lysa Arryn and her son, Robert,” Sansa reads from the screen. “Lysa? Didn’t Mom have a sister named Lysa?”

“That _is_ Lysa,” Ned says solemnly. “She married a Peacekeeper and moved to Seven before you were born. We never thought we’d get to meet her son. Sansa, this is barbaric.”

“Don’t let anyone catch you saying that,” Shae says quickly. “Where is your mentor? Rodrik’s got to be around here somewhere – unless he found the bar, I suppose – but no matter. You’ve got your first training sessions tomorrow, so you two should sleep.”

Sansa narrows her eyes critically. “Will the Gamemakers be there?”

“They should be,” says Shae.

“Good.” Sansa says nothing else. She leaves the living room and stalks to her bedroom, where she collapses onto the bed without changing her clothes and falls almost immediately into a deep, dreamless sleep.

*

Sansa feels almost nothing for the next twenty-four hours.

It’s as if her mind has gone blank entirely. She shuffles from station to station in the Training Center, Ned leading her along like a shepherd with his littlest sheep. He doesn’t hand her a weapon at all that first day, as if he knows that her only instinct is to turn it back on herself.

Midway through the session, a door slams at the back of the room, and Sansa turns to see a short man with a peculiar mustache striding across the floor. A murmur echoes throughout the room, and she turns to her father for clarification.

“That can’t be –” He looks as confused as she feels. “It looks like – but it _can’t_ be.”

“Who?” Sansa presses.

The man seems to be heading straight toward the Starks, and Sansa finds herself filled with the urge to move behind her father. But she resists it, and straightens her shoulders. As he reaches the place where they stand, the slight smile on his lips is replaced by a more solemn, unreadable expression.

“So it is true,” the man says quietly. “Ned Stark. Seven hells. Out of all the places I never expected to meet again –”

“A most unusual turn of events, yes,” says Ned. “One might even call it _suspicious_.”

He shakes his head. “Perish the thought,” he says. “And you must be – ah, yes. Sansa. I’m Petyr Baelish, the Head Gamemaker.”

Sansa looks him up and down carefully, noting the silver mockingbird pin fastened at his throat. He wears his black shirt buttoned all the way up to the collar, and a suit jacket, but no tie. “I thought Roose Bolton was the Head Gamemaker,” she says skeptically.

“Roose Bolton has retired,” says Petyr Baelish. He gives her a slight smile. “You have lovely red hair,” he adds. “It will be criminal if your stylist doesn’t find some way to play it up.”

She notices her father’s face beginning to redden, and takes his hand in one of hers. If nothing else, she can tell when he’s about to lose his cool, and despite the unsettling air coming from this man, there’s no reason for him to blow up at someone who literally holds the key to their survival. “Thank you,” she says politely, and smiles. “I like your pin.”

He smiles back, one hand drifting to his collar to adjust the position of said pin. “Thank you very much, Sansa,” he says. “I’m looking forward to the rest of your training sessions. You as well, Ned.”

As he walks away, Sansa looks up at her father, reading him carefully. Ned looks as if he’s seen a ghost.

“Who was that man, Dad?” she asks, perhaps against her better judgment.

He looks at her strangely. “It’s a story for another time, Sansa,” he says, in a final way that suggests she should not argue.

*

Her private session with the Gamemakers is uneventful. She manages to throw a couple knives, having finally mastered the flicking motion – “Imagine that you’re driving a whip,” Ned told her over and over that second day, and when she finally got it, she felt like she’d just conquered the world. However, the rest of the session leaned hard on her other skills – she spent most of it weaving together a series of branches to create a near-perfect shield of camouflage, and scaled a few nets and ladders to prove her adeptness at hiding. But it wasn’t much. All she really did was hide.

Which is why, when “Sansa Stark, District Five” appears on the screen, everyone in the apartment is taken aback when she scores a ten.

Her father, in particular, looks enraged. She assumes it was because he only scored an eight, but then he opens his mouth and spits a single word: “ _Littlefinger_.”

“Dad, you’ve got to tell me what this is about,” Sansa says furiously. “If it’s about that Gamemaker, please just tell me, there’s nobody here to hear you and I need to know –”

“I wish I understood,” Ned says. “At first I thought it could only be a ruse of some kind, that none of us could fully grasp until it’s too late. But giving you a ten, making you out like you’re some kind of prodigy – it’s all starting to make sense.”

“What is?”

“He couldn’t have your mother, so now he’s going to destroy you.”

Sansa shakes her head, bewildered. “That makes no sense. He’s from the Capitol, what would he want with Mom?”

“Petyr Baelish grew up in District Five,” Ned says firmly. “The gods only know how he ended up as one of Daenerys Targaryen’s lapdogs, but he was always too clever for his own good. I can’t say I’m surprised.”

“What does that have to do with Mom, though?”

“I’m getting to that, Sansa. Baelish – or Littlefinger, as we knew him then – always carried a torch for your mother. Your aunt Lysa, as it turns out, had quite the crush on him. It didn’t end well for any of the involved parties, and we never heard from him again – I figured he’d fallen off the map entirely.”

“Apparently not,” Sansa says. “And Lysa? I assume she’s here for a reason as well?”

“I can only imagine,” says Ned. “All I can safely say, at this point, is that we are all in an extremely dangerous position. You particularly, Sansa.”

She shakes her head. “If he wants me dead, I’m already dead.”

Her father gives her a stony look, one that she finds impossible to parse. “I’m afraid that might not be the case.”

*

They’re separated just before they go into their separate rooms to enter the Arena.

Ned wraps her in his arms, holds on as if he’s afraid to let go. “Remember,” he whispers into her hair. “You’re a wolf. You’re a wolf in a little bird’s clothing.”

She swallows hard, not allowing herself to cry. As she enters the room, her stylist, Ros, is waiting there for her.

“I have your token,” she says, in a flat, broken voice. As Sansa approaches, she holds out a little silver pin in the shape of a mockingbird. It’s identical to the one she saw on Petyr Baelish’s collar that first day in the Training Center.

“Do I have to wear it?” Sansa asks reluctantly.

Ros nods slowly. “I would highly encourage it,” she says. She brushes her hair back behind one shoulder, revealing an identical pin on her own collar. Sansa slowly moves closer, and allows Ros to affix it in the same position, just under the lapel of her jacket.

“Thank you,” she says, at a loss for what else to say.

Ros seems to bite her tongue. “I wish you the best of luck,” she finally says. “May the odds be ever in your favor.”

At this, Sansa can only laugh bitterly. “They never are.”

The countdown begins, and she steps into her glass tube. She isn’t afraid anymore. She only wants this nightmare to end.

*

“I understand it now,” Shireen says, not looking down at Sansa as they scale the tree together. “The Arena is split into four sections, you see? Desert, plain, forest, and lake. The four elements. It’s the fourth Quell, four quarters. It makes perfect sense.”

“That does make sense,” Sansa agrees. “Did your dad figure that out first, or did you?”

“No, it was me,” the girl says, as she hops onto a branch, holding tight to the trunk as she moves over to allow Sansa to take her position on the branch opposite. “My father is intelligent, but he often lacks the ability to see the Arena for the trees, so to speak.”

“Mine is the same way,” Sansa says. “They should be back soon, right?”

“They haven’t been gone long,” says Shireen. “The idea to climb the tree was smart. We’ll be able to see them if they come back, but we’re not just sitting out in the open. Where did you learn to climb in Five? Your district isn’t known for its greenery. Half of your tributes die because they’ve never seen weeds before.”

Sansa bites her lip, holding back a laugh. The younger girl’s matter-of-fact manner skipped right past propriety into a sort of candor she was taught to avoid, but despite this quality, she was not an unpleasant person to be around. “We don’t have trees, but we do have power lines and electrical towers everywhere, and windmills and water towers, too,” she says. “Plenty of opportunities to learn to climb. I was never as good as my brothers, and my sister Arya’s a menace, but I get by.”

Shireen nods. “My father’s friend Davos taught me,” she says. “He’s a Peacekeeper, but he went through the Center for Personal and Athletic Growth - the Career farm, you know - so he knows all about these things. My father prefers that I not spend so much time outdoors, but we don’t tell him.”

“Your father works in the quarry?” Sansa asks. Holding on carefully to the branch beneath her, she slips her backpack off one shoulder and rifles around in it, coming up with a protein bar. Breaking it in half, she offers the larger half to Shireen, who accepts it. 

“He’s a foreman,” says Shireen. “He went to the Center too, when he was young. My uncle is the Mayor, and my other uncle, Renly, works in the Capitol now. I hoped we would get to see him while we were here, but he never came to see us.”

The mention of a district-born transplant to the Capitol strikes a familiar note in Sansa’s mind, and she decides to take the opportunity to ask the question. “How did he get to move to the Capitol, if he was born in Two?” she asks. “That’s normally not allowed, I don’t think.”

“Well, he started out as a Head Peacekeeper, and got promoted,” Shireen says. “Now he sits on the President’s council. He’s the Head of Security for the whole country.”

“I guess that is a special circumstance,” Sansa says. “Do you know of anyone else like that? Someone who got to move from their District all the way to the Capitol?”

“No,” says Shireen. “But wouldn’t that be neat? I wish I could do that.”

“Me too,” Sansa says absentmindedly.

*

The ambush comes from nowhere, late that night.

Sansa can only watch in horror from thirty yards away as the adults from Ten, Eleven, and Twelve converge on their campsite, weapons in hand. Stannis goes down fighting two men at once, and manages to sink an axe blade into Ten’s back and snap Twelve’s spindly neck before his cannon fire announces the end of his life.

It’s just her father and Eleven now, and they’re fighting hard. She’s never seen her father lay hands on anyone before. He always turned the other cheek, claimed that it wasn’t the Stark way to resort to violence, but now he’s holding his own as if he’s trained for years to do so, blocking the thrusts of the other man’s spear handily with his own broadsword.

She’s frozen where she stands, hypnotized by the clang and the flash of metal on metal. Suddenly, the Eleven man slips and falls to the ground, and for a full moment, she’s convinced that her father has won. He draws back his sword above his head to deal the man a final blow, and it’s at that moment that Eleven plunges his spear deep into her father’s unguarded chest.

The sword falls to the ground, and Eleven doesn’t exactly have time to dodge. It slices into his shoulder, and he lets out a raw scream. 

A cannon sounds, but it’s not his.

It’s only then that Sansa notices Shireen’s lifeless body on the ground between them.

*

Her father is dead.

Her father is dead.

Her father is dead.

Ned Stark is dead.

Sansa Stark is alive and Ned Stark is dead.

*

The Parade of the Fallen the following night reveals that the day was a bloodbath.

Sansa has managed to stay out of the way of the other tributes. The forest section is the easiest in which to take cover, but it also seems to be crawling with other people, perhaps for exactly that reason. She figures that the Fours probably staked out their camp on the lake quadrant, but now that both are dead, it seems mostly uninhabited. That leaves Desert and Prairie for her taking: both lack places to effectively hide, but they both allow her to be completely aware of her surroundings as well, and so she chooses the Desert quadrant.

Not that it helps her when Eleven Girl grabs her by the hair from behind, holding a knife to her throat.

“Hello, Sansa,” says Tyene Sand. Her grip is strong, and her voice is almost sickeningly innocent, a quiet sing-song. “Want to play a game?”

“No!” She shrieks out her answer almost immediately. “No, no, please let me go, don’t hurt me, please don’t hurt me, I’ll help you, I can help you, please don’t kill me –”

“How can _you_ help _me_?” Tyene asks bitterly. “What worth is Ned Stark’s little bird to a Sand snake?”

“I know about healing!” Sansa says pleadingly. “Please – I know your father is hurt. I can help. My mother is a Maester, and I know about medicine and herbs. Please let me go, and I’ll help him. I’ll help you both.”

Tyene seems to reconsider, but then a hard look passes over her face and she shakes her head. “I don’t think so,” she says. “No hard feelings, kid, but I know my fair share about herbs and plants, too. There’s nothing you can do for us.” She presses her blade even harder against Sansa’s throat. “Any last requests?”

“Stop, Tyene.”

The voice comes from behind them both, and Tyene hauls her around, still keeping a harsh grip on Sansa’s hair. Her father, stands behind them, one hand on his spear and the other shoulder badly bandaged.

“I just _grabbed_ her!” Tyene says triumphantly. “It was so easy, you have no idea – if you want to kill her, you can go right ahead –”

“Stop, Tyene,” Oberyn repeats. “She is an innocent.”

Tyene frowns, clearly taken aback. “Who cares? She’s still one more person between one of us getting out of here or not. Just let me get this one, Dad. I promise I’ll make it quick. She won’t suffer.”

“Sansa Stark is not yours to kill,” says Oberyn. “Sansa, you said you have some understanding of healing and medicine?”

Sansa tries to nod, but only succeeds in causing Tyene to rip out a few strands of her hair. “I studied under my mother,” she says. “Catelyn Stark. She’s the Head Maester in District Five. I promise, I can do a better job patching up that shoulder wound than whoever took care of it before.”

“That would be me,” Tyene says coolly. 

“ _Enough_ ,” Oberyn says. “What are your terms, Sansa? What do you want from us?”

Sansa thinks quickly. “Wait until the last possible minute to kill me,” she suggests shakily. “I don’t need you to sacrifice yourselves for me. But don’t kill me yet. Protect me, just for a little while. I want to get a message through to my siblings, and it’s going to take time.”

“What message?”

“I can’t tell you,” Sansa says. “It’s all in code, and I’ve only gotten about half of it transmitted so far. It’s taking longer than I thought. But please believe me, please, when I tell you that it’s really important. I need more time. That’s all.”

Oberyn gives his daughter a long, meaningful look, and Sansa feels Tyene release her. As the older girl sheathes her dagger once more, Sansa walks toward Oberyn cautiously. “Where are you camped?” she asks.

With a smile, Oberyn points toward the center of the Arena. “We’re inside the Cornucopia.”

*

With every day that goes by, the list of remaining tributes grows shorter.

Tyene returns from a fight with one of the last adults nursing a deep wound in her stomach. “The bitch from Seven got me,” she spits bitterly. “Lysa Arryn. I made sure her brat got a nice, easy death and everything, and this is how she repays me.”

 _Lysa Arryn_. Her Aunt Lysa, Sansa realizes, though it’s never been a name she’s had the privilege to use. She kneels before her box of herbs and plants and picks up a small sachet, out of which she shakes two small seeds. “I’m going to give you milk of the poppy for the pain,” she says, “and apply a poultice of weirwood paste, which should speed the healing.”

Tyene pulls a face. “I don’t need milk of the poppy,” she says. “I’ve felt pain before. I’d rather be awake, thanks.”

“Not like this,” Sansa says. “Weirwood paste is a rough ride. My mom used it on me once, when I was little and got bit by the dog. It’s indescribable. Your entire body is just in agonizing pain, and you see things – visions. Or hallucinations, really. Have you ever been stung by a tracker jacker? Same thing, but worse.”

As Tyene listens, she crosses her arms protectively over her chest. “Okay,” she says finally, reluctantly. “Give me milk of the poppy, then. But if you off me while I’m asleep –”

“There will be no one left who can adequately defend me if your father fails in his mission to kill the two remaining tributes,” Sansa says. “I’m not an idiot, Tyene.”

As Tyene drifts into a reverie from the milk of the poppy, Sansa prepares the poultice. Weirwood paste, a bit of clay from the river, iodine-purified water, all wrapped in a strip of cloth torn from the inner lining of her jacket. And then, the final ingredient, added as if it were an afterthought: precisely ten drops of essence of nightshade.

The same components she’s been using on Oberyn’s shoulder wrap for the past two days.

She hears two cannons fire in the distance as she picks up the poultice and walks toward Tyene, whose eyes are heavily hooded and drooping. Sansa winces as she lifts up Tyene’s shirt to bare her abdomen. The wound is deeper than she’d initially thought, and still gurgling blood. “Tyene, I’m going to apply the poultice now,” she says softly. “You’re going to feel a bit of pain, but it will all be over soon.”

“Mmmph,” Tyene mumbles. She winces and grinds her teeth as Sansa presses the wrap to the gash on her stomach, but then lets her eyes fall closed. 

“Do you feel anything?” Sansa asks.

“Stings,” Tyene says through a thick slur. “Hurts. _Fuck_. That hurts.”

“That’s the weirwood paste,” Sansa says. “That means it’s working. Let yourself fall asleep. Your father should be back soon, and when you wake up, you’ll feel so much better.”

Tyene’s eyes have begun to drift all the way shut. “I just want to go home,” she mumbles. “See m’mother. My sisters.”

“I know,” Sansa says quietly. “I understand.” She strokes the older girl’s fair hair as her murmurs fade to nothing.

When she turns, she finds Oberyn standing behind them, near the entrance to the Cornucopia. He’s clutching his shoulder.

“I know,” he says simply. “What you’ve done. I know everything.”

The familiar feeling of panic immediately returns to Sansa, and her mind races as she opens her mouth. “I don’t – you don’t understand – I’ve only tried to help –”

“No, I know exactly what you’ve been doing,” Oberyn says. His voice is steady and calm, disconcertingly so. “Believe it or not, Sansa, I know a thing or two about poisons myself. I recognized the effects of essence of nightshade immediately.”

“Then why didn’t you kill me?” she asks as she slowly rises to her feet. 

He regards her in silence for a moment. “You are an innocent,” he says. “I’m not here to kill innocents.”

“Only everyone else who gets in your way,” Sansa says, his voice trembling, but he’s shaking his head.

“No,” he says.

“You killed my father.”

“Your father would have killed me had I not struck first.”

“He was protecting _me_.”

“As I have only protected my daughter.” Oberyn circles the Cornucopia, moving closer to where Tyene lies on the floor. “How long does she have?”

“I don’t know,” Sansa lies.

“Tell me the truth, Sansa.”

She bites her lip. “Ten more minutes. Give or take.”

“That is fair.” Oberyn sighs. “And I trust that you’ve used an irreversible poison?”

“Yes.”

“I thought as much. You are nothing if not thorough.”

“A wolf in a little bird’s clothing,” Sansa says, unaware that she’s speaking out loud.

Oberyn smiles sadly. “Did your father say that? It sounds like him.”

“Are you going to kill me?”

“What would be the point?” he asks. “I could not protect my daughter. I’m going to die soon – no, Sansa, don’t shake your head, I can feel it starting to set in. Pity you didn’t use a higher dose, or a quicker-acting poison. I’ve never fancied death by my own weapons.” He squeezes his shoulder with his other hand even harder, in apparent agony. “Go, Sansa.”

“What do you mean, go?”

“Start running. Remain innocent. Give me ten minutes with my daughter. I won’t force you to sit here and watch us both die.”

She blinks and begins to back away. “This is a trap.”

“It is not. I promise you that.”

“In these games? No. You’re not. But the Games are not who you are. Go.”

She’s almost to the mouth of the Cornucopia now. The last thing she sees as she looks back is Oberyn leaning over Tyene’s unconscious body.

Ten minutes later, she hears a single cannon fire, and then, almost immediately following, one more.

*

Sansa’s dress for the Closing Ceremonies is black and cut low, with feathered epaulets and a long black chain. Ros painstakingly applies makeup to her eyes and paints on a dark red pout. “A little bird in mourning,” she says as she affixes the silver mockingbird to the lowest point on her neckline. “The entire country is going to fall all over themselves for you. That is, if they haven’t already – they were chanting your name in the streets last night.”

“Really?” Sansa asks, half in wonder despite herself. 

“Really,” her stylist confirms. “They haven’t loved a victor this much since little Marge Tyrell, and all she did was take out the bastard she was paired with first. I think you’re going to be very safe. The President likes the victors like you. Keep your mouth shut and don’t sing too loudly, and you’ll be just fine.”

As she walks out onstage, to the cheers of what looks like a crowd of at least a few thousand, President Targaryen joins her from the wings stage left. She’s flanked by a set of Peacekeepers in pure, matte white, and Sansa notices, in respective order: how surprisingly short she is in person, how blinding her pure white dress and platinum hair are, and how still her face is – even as she greets Sansa, her expression seems to change not at all.

Sansa bends at the knees to receive the half circlet crown. It’s surprisingly heavy atop her head.

The President smiles coolly. “On behalf of the nation of Panem, I congratulate you, Sansa Stark,” she says. “You have brought a great honor to District Five and your country, and showed great courage and talent in doing so.”

Sansa smiles. “Thank you, President,” she says.

As the President extends a hand for a shake, she leans forward and up to whisper in Sansa’s ear. “What a lovely pin,” she says.

“Thank you,” Sansa repeats in a quiet tone. “It was a gift.”

“A lovely little bird,” says the President. “Just like you.”

As the Quell flame is extinguished and she leaves the stage, now flanked by a set of Peacekeepers of her own, the lights go down in the theatre, and she can hear the crowd getting louder and louder, chanting her name.

_SAN-SA._

_SAN-SA._

_SAN-SA._

*

As she walks down the steps to the closing party, the crowd erupts in applause, screams and whistles. Behind her, Shae keeps one hand between her shoulder blades, an unstoppable force pressing her forward.

After about an hour of steady conversation with countless admirers, there’s a tap on her shoulder. She spins to make eye contact with a familiar face. Petyr Baelish’s little beard and mustache have been freshly trimmed for the occasion, and he’s in all black, with his own mockingbird at his throat.

“Sansa,” he says, by way of greeting. “My congratulations are in order. May I have this dance?”

Sansa glances at Shae, who raises both eyebrows. “Of course you may, Mr. Baelish,” she says, as he takes her by the hand.

“Please, call me Petyr,” he says. “You’re the talk of the town, Sansa.”

“I can’t imagine what they’re saying,” says Sansa. 

“It’s all good, I assure you,” he says. Up close, he smells of mint and another scent entirely, one that she can’t place. “An incredible performance. One they’ll be talking about for years to come, hopefully.”

“Hopefully?” Sansa asks. “What do you mean, ‘hopefully’?”

Petyr Baelish shakes his head, ignoring her entirely. “You look truly beautiful, Sansa. How old are you now?”

The gracious smile vanishes from her face as she absorbs his question. “I’m fourteen,” she says.

He plucks at a long auburn lock and rearranges the way it lies on her shoulder. Then, slowly, in a way that makes her insides shrink and shiver in a terrible, unwanting, unyielding way, he runs one finger down her cheek and jaw.

“I’ll wait,” he says. “Keep wearing that pin.”

As he turns and disappears through the crowd, Sansa stands frozen where he left her.

She knows, innately, that she has made a terrible mistake.

**Author's Note:**

> Side notes:
> 
> Margaery's tribute costume is heavily inspired by Rihanna's **NSFW** [infamous crystal dress](https://31.media.tumblr.com/1912b080ff97c86c25733f222b0c1eea/tumblr_inline_n9b0noFHF91qasd8x.jpg).


End file.
